In San Francisco Jenny Read (b.1945), an Episcopal sculptor, was raped and murdered while working on a sculpture of St. John of the Cross in Potrero Hill. In 2009 police using DNA evidence arrested and charged James Lee Mayfield (63), a registered sex offender with her murder.
Links: Artist, USA, SF, Murder, Rape

1976 Jun 16

U.S. Ambassador Francis E. Meloy, Jr. (b.1917) was murdered along with his associate Robert Waring, an American economic advisor. The two had been en route to a meeting with Lebanese president-elect Elias Sarkis when they were abducted by Muslim guerillas in Beirut.
Links: USA, Murder, Lebanon

1976 Jul 5

In SF the body of Wanda Baun (19), a prostitute, was found dead. She had been stabbed over 50 times. In 2007 Darrell Sweigart was convicted of 2nd degree murder after DNA evidence linked to the murder. He was already serving a 25 year to life sentence for rape and robbery.
Links: USA, SF, Murder, DNA, Robbery, Rape

1976 Jul 12

Edward Charles Allaway, a campus janitor, killed 7 people in a library at California State Univ. at Fullerton. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was confined at a state mental hospital.
Links: California, Murder, Mad Man

1976 Jul 14

Carmelo Soria (b.1921), a Spanish UN official in Chile, was abducted. His corpse found two days later in a car sunk in the Canal del Carmen in the Piramide sector of Santiago de Chile. He was assassinated by Chile's DINA agents as a part of Operation Condor. Soria was first detained in the Vía Naranja house in the sector of Lo Curro, shared by DINA agent Michael Townley.
Links: Chile, Spain, USA, Murder

In Northern Ireland Majella O'Hare (12) was shot in the back, as she walked with other schoolgirls to a Catholic Church to give their confessions in the village of Whitecross in South Armagh, a borderland powerbase for the IRA. Her father, who died in 1992, witnessed the shooting and watched her die in an army helicopter as she was being evacuated to hospital. The family received a 1,500-pound ($2,400) payment from the British government in 1976 as compensation for the killing. In 2011 the family received a face-to-face apology from Britain's senior government official in Northern Ireland.
Links: Murder, Northern Ireland, Kids

1976 Oct 4

In Gregg v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on the death sentence in murder cases. This restored the legality of capital punishment, which had not been practiced since 1967. The first execution following this ruling was Gary Gilmore in 1977.
Links: GeorgiaUS, Murder, Supreme Court

1976 Oct 15

French-Argentine citizen Marianne Erize (22) was kidnapped and disappeared. In 2008 retired army major Jorge Antonio Olivera was arrested for the "forced disappearance, kidnapping and torture" of Erize when Olivera was a lieutenant in the 22nd Mountain Infantry Regiment. In August 2000, Olivera was detained in Italy at the request of French authorities, but was freed after presenting what was later found to be a falsified death certificate saying Erize had died on Nov. 11, 1976 — 26 days after being illegally detained.
Links: Argentina, France, Murder

1976 Oct 16

In Alabama Sheryl Lynn Payton (24) was abducted, raped and murdered. In 1977 Thomas Whisenhant (29) was convicted after he confessed to her murder and that of 2 other convenience store clerks. Whisenhant's original conviction was overturned by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. He was convicted again at a retrial in 1981. On May 27, 2010, Whisenhant was executed by lethal injection.
Links: USA, Murder, Alabama, Rape

1976 Oct

William George Bundy (b.1957), construction worker, disappeared in Cook County, Ill. Bones of 33 men and boys were found in late 1978 under the home of John Wayne Gacy (1942-1994). In 2011 authorities identified Bundy’s bones among those found under Gacy’s Chicago house.
Links: USA, Illinois, Chicago, Murder

Harry Flamburis, president of the SF chapter of the Hell’s Angels, was found shot to death in his Daly City house along with roommate Dannette Barrett.
Links: USA, SF, Murder, Daly City

1976

South Africa's Surgeon General, Major N.J. Nieuwoudt, hired Dr. Wouter Basson to work for the SADF's medical military unit known as the 7th SAMS Battalion. Under Dr. Basson, head of the chemical and biological and weapons program, black prisoners were killed by injections. In 2000 Johan Theron, a former special forces officer, testified how he flung the victim’s corpses from an airplane into the Atlantic between 1979 and 1987. Theron and Gen. Fritz Loots had decided that there were too many guerrillas of the South West African People’s Organization in the prison camps.
Links: South Africa, Murder

Mass killings marked these years known as Argentina’s “Dirty War” period. At least 9,000 people, suspected by the government of being leftist dissidents, were arrested, tortured and never seen again. In 1997 Adolfo Scilingo, a former naval officer, testified in Spain that as many as 1,500 Argentine navy officials participated in death flights, where people were hurled into the ocean. In 1998 Marguerite Feitlowitz published “A Lexicon of Terror,” covering the “Dirty War.” In 2000 an Italian court convicted 7 Argentine officers in absentia for kidnapping and killing Italian citizens in the “dirty war.” The military and police operated about 10 detention centers during the dictatorship in La Plata, a city of universities south of Buenos Aires where the crackdown's toll on college students was particularly severe.
Links: Argentina, Murder, Govm’t. Scandal

1977 Jan 17

Gary Gilmore (b.1940), convicted for two murders he committed in Utah, was shot by a firing squad at Utah State Prison in the first US execution in a decade. In 1979 Norman Mailer authored his Pulitzer Prize winning book: “The Executioner’s Song,” the story of Gary Gilmore.
Links: USA, Utah, Murder, Biography

1977 Mar 9

Activist Elisabeth Kaesemann (30), a German sociologist, was abducted in Argentina. Her bullet-riddled body was later found dumped on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
Links: Argentina, Germany, Murder

1977 Apr 7

The RAF gunned down Siegfried Bubeck, a West German federal prosecutor, his driver, Wolfgang Goebel, and the guard Georg Wurster. In 2009 police, using new DNA evidence, arrested Verena Becker (57), a former German leftist terrorist on suspicion of involvement in the slayings. Becker had been arrested a month after the ambush, following a shootout with police. Prosecutors at the time did not have enough evidence to try her on charges of involvement in the Buback slaying, but convicted her of armed robbery and attempted murder stemming from the shootout. She was sentenced to life in prison. In 1989 she was pardoned of those charges by German Pres. Richard von Weizsaecker and released from prison. In 2010 Becker was charged with 3 counts of murder for her alleged role in the fatal 1977 ambush.
Links: Germany, Murder, DNA

1977 May 14

Capt. Robert Nairac (29), an underground British soldier, was abducted from a border pub by an IRA gang, taken across the border into a Republic of Ireland forest, and shot through the head. In 2008 the Police Service of Northern Ireland press office confirmed the arrest of Kevin Crilly (57), an IRA veteran, on suspicion of involvement in Nairac's killing. On April 1, 2011, Crilly was acquitted of all charges against him.
Links: Britain, Ireland, Murder, Northern Ireland

TimelinesA text-based site.

1977 Jul 11

In Argentina Bishop Carlos Horacio Ponce de Leon (b.1914) died in a car accident while driving with Victor Oscar Martinez to deliver evidence of junta crimes to the Vatican’s representative. The evidence disappeared.
Links: Argentina, Murder

1977 Aug 10

Postal employee David Berkowitz was arrested in Yonkers, NY, accused of being the "Son of Sam" gunman responsible for six slayings and seven woundings. Berkowitz was sentenced to six consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences.
Links: USA, New York, Murder

1977 Aug 15

Police in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, found Mary Parsh (58) and her daughter, Brenda (27), lying nude side by side on a bed at home, their hands tied behind their backs. Each had been shot in the head. In 2007 Timothy Krajcir (63), a graduate from Southern Illinois with a degree in law enforcement, confessed to their rape and murder and at least 4 more. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the 1982 killing of a Southern Illinois University Carbondale student, Deborah Sheppard. and, in addition, was charged with five counts of murder and three counts of rape against women in the Cape Girardeau, Missouri, area from 1977 to 1982. In 2008, Krajcir pleaded guilty and was sentenced to another 40 years in prison for the 1978 killing of Marion resident Virginia Lee Witte.
Links: USA, Murder, Missouri, Rape

1977 Sep 9

Mary Ann Quigley (17) was killed near War Memorial Park in Santa Clara, Ca. In 2006 Richard Armand Archibeque (47) was arrested for her rape and murder based on DNA evidence. They had been classmates at Santa Clara High School.
Links: California, Murder, DNA, Rape

1977 Sep 10

Convicted murderer Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant, became the last person to date to be executed by the guillotine in France.
Links: France, Murder, Tunisia

Lou Ellen Burleigh (21) of Walnut Creek, Ca., went missing. Roger Kibbe was later identified as a suspect confessed to her rape and murder. In 2009 Kibbe, who had become known as the I-5 strangler, was convicted of her murder and that of 5 others. In 2011 remains of Burleigh were found in a dry riverbed near Lake Berryessa.
Links: USA, California, Murder, Rape

1977 Sep

In Philadelphia Helen "Holly" Maddux, a Bryn Mawr College graduate from Tyler, Texas, was murdered and stuffed into a steamer trunk for 18 months until her body was discovered. Ira Einhorn, "hippie guru" was arrested for the murder in 1979 but released on bail. He fled to hide in France. Fred Maddux, Holly's father, committed suicide in 1988. Einhorn was convicted in absentia in 1993. In June,1997, he was arrested in France. A French court ruled against extradition and released Einhorn. Einhorn was arrested in 1998 under a new extradition warrant. The events were broadcast as a TV crime story in 1999 titled "The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer." In 1999 The French Supreme Court ruled that Einhorn should be returned to the US. In 1999 a civil suit ordered Einhorn to pay $907 million to the Maddux family. Einhorn was extradited to the US in 2001. he was convicted of murder Oct 17, 2002.
Links: USA, Pennsylvania, Murder

In Argentina Hilda Palacios, Humberto Brandalisi, Carlos Laja and Ruben Cardozo were kidnapped. Prosecutors later said they were taken to the clandestine prison and torture center known as La Perla on the outskirts of Cordoba and killed the following month. Their bodies were then dumped in the street to make it look like they died in a shootout with officials. In 2008 former army chief Luciano Benjamin Menendez (81) was convicted of kidnapping, torturing and killing the left-wing militants. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Links: Argentina, Murder

1977 Dec

In California Richard Phillips of Orange County murdered contractor Bruce Bartulis in Madera County. Phillips had enlisted Bartulis and another contractor in a plot to smuggle cocaine and provide stolen insulation and was convicted of murder in 1980. In 2013 the US Supreme Court refused to reinstate a death sentence against Phillips (63).
Links: USA, California, Murder

In Missouri a serial killer committed at least 12 murders during this period. In 2004 Kansas City police used DNA technology to charge Lorenzo Gilyard with 12 murders.
Links: USA, Murder, Missouri

1977

Emma Crapser (92) was killed in her Poughkeepsie, NY, apartment. In 1983 Dewey Bozella (b.1959) was convicted of her grisly murder on the testimony of two convicted criminals and served 26 years in prison before being finally in 2009 after the nonprofit Innocence Project intervened and turned over evidence that had been suppressed during his trial.
Links: USA, New York, Murder

1978 Jan 10

In Nicaragua Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Cardenal (b.1924), journalist and editor of La Prensa, was shot dead. His murder sparked the Sandinista-led uprising that later toppled Somoza. His wife, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, later became head of the country and in 1996 published her autobiography: "Dreams of the Heart." The murder also inspired Susan Meiselas, photographer, to go to Nicaragua from NY. She spent ten years photographing events in the area, later published as "Nicaragua." The Sandinista Party was founded by Carlos Fonseca.
Links: Nicaragua, Murder, Journalism

1978 Jan 15

Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman, two students at Florida State University in Tallahassee, were murdered in their sorority house. Theodore Bundy was later convicted of the crime, and executed.
Links: USA, Murder, Florida, Mass murder

In Florida Karol Hurst (21) was abducted while leaving a grocery store in Leesburg. She was driven to a wooded area, beaten, raped, and shot. Her pregnant body was then dragged further into the woods. That same evening Freddie Lee Hall and an accomplice shot and killed Deputy Lonnie Coburn. Both fled the scene but were soon arrested. Hall was convicted and sentenced to death on June 27. Hall’s IQ was later said to be around 75.
Links: USA, Murder, Florida, Rape

1978 Feb 28

Robert Rowe (d.1997) of Brooklyn killed his wife and 3 children with a baseball bat. He was tried and later released from a mental institution and became a father again. In 2001 Julie Salamon authored "Facing the Wind," a narrative of the Rowe case.
Links: USA, NYC, Murder

1978 Mar 10

Richard Hovey (26) abducted Tina Salazar (8) in Hayward, Ca., as she walked home from school. He left her by a roadside with fatal wounds later the same day. She died 8 days later. In 2006 an appeals court overturned his death sentence saying lawyers failed to inform a psychiatrist of his history of mental illness.
Links: Murder, SF Bay Area, Mad Man, Kids

1978 Mar 16

Red Brigade terrorists kidnapped Aldo Moro, Italian politician and 5 time PM, and killed 5 of his bodyguards. Moro, who was planning to form a government combining his Christian Democrats and the Communist Party, was later murdered by the RB. Alessio Casimiri a member of the Red Brigades was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for his role in the abduction. Casimiri escaped to Nicaragua and opened a restaurant. It was later reported that police decided not to rescue Moro.
Links: Italy, Murder

TimelinesA text-based site.

1978 Mar 28

Laura Beyerly (16) was last seen in the Los Altos, Ca., school parking lot. Her remains were found a year later in the Santa Cruz County hills on property belonging to the uncle of Scott B. Schultz. In 2006 police in Colorado arrested Scott B. Schultz, a boy friend with whom she had broken up. In 2007 Schultz faced just one year in jail in a plea deal.
Links: USA, California, Colorado, Murder, SF Bay Area

1978 Apr 9

David Leslie Murtishaw (24) murdered three film students, James Lee Henderson (24), Martha Bernice Soto (22) and Ingrid M. Etayo (22), in the Mohave Desert. Murtishaw was convicted and sentenced to death in 1979. He died in 2011 while on death row at San Quentin.
Links: USA, California, Murder

1978 Apr 22

Cynthia Waxman (11) was raped and killed whiled playing in a field in Moraga, Ca. In 2005 DNA evidence revealed that she had been killed by Charles Jackson, a convict who died at age 64 in Folsom Prison in 2002. Jackson was linked to at least 6 other victims.
Links: California, Murder, DNA, Kids, Rape

1978 May 11

Carol Schmal (23) and Lawrence Lionberg (29) were murdered in Chicago. Four men were arrested for rape and murder and 2 of the men were sentenced to death. In 1999 Kenny Adams, Willie Rainge, Verneal Jimerson and Dennis Williams were released after a journalism class proved their innocence. The men then filed a suit and settled with Cook County for $36 million.
Links: USA, Chicago, Murder, Journalism, Rape

1978 Jun 29

Bob Crane (b.1928), the man who played Colonel Robert Hogan in the TV show "Hogan’s Heroes," was found bludgeoned to death in Scottsdale, Az. John Henry Carpenter (d.1998 at 70), a prime suspect, was tried and acquitted in 1990.
Links: USA, TV, Murder, Arizona

Franklin Bradshow was killed in SLC, Utah. His daughter, Frances B. Schreuder (d.2004), had persuaded her son to kill her wealthy father due to "his stinginess." Schreuder was convicted in 1983.
Links: USA, Utah, Murder

1978 Aug 16

James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., told a Capitol Hill hearing he did not commit the crime, saying he'd been set up by a mysterious man called "Raoul."
Links: USA, Black History, Murder

1978 Aug 20

In New Jersey 5 teenage boys disappeared. In 2010 Lee Evans (56) and Philander Hampton (53) were arrested and charged with their murder. Prosecutors said the boys were herded into an abandoned building and burned to death in a dispute over some missing marijuana. On Aug 20, 2010, Evans was freed from jail after relatives put up $950,000 in bail. His cousin remained in jail. On Oct 3, 2011, Hampton (54) was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Under sentencing guidelines he was only required to serve 20% of the sentence. In 2011 a jury found Lee Evans not guilty of 10-murder related counts in the deaths of the teens.
Links: USA, Murder, New Jersey, Teens Amuck

1978 Sep 11

Kippi Vaught and Rhonda Scheffler (17) were kidnapped from a shopping mall in Sacramento. Their bodies were found 2 days later east of town. Gerald Gallego (b.1946) and accomplice Charlene Williams (24) began a rape and murder spree that left 9 women and one young man dead. Williams served 17 years in prison. Gallego was sentenced to death but was still alive with appeals.
Links: USA, California, Murder, Rape

1978 Sep 28

Rosemary Cobbs (26), a graduate student at USC in Los Angeles, was beaten and shot to death by Stevie Lamar Fields (22). Williams had been out of prison for just 2 weeks when he went on a 3-week crime spree. In 2007 a federal appeals court reinstated his death sentence.
Links: USA, California, Murder

Mary Vincent (15), was raped, maimed and left for dead in a canyon near Modesto, Ca. She lived and identified Lawrence Singleton as her assailant. He was convicted but released after serving 8 years of a 14 year sentence. In 1997 he was arrested for the murder of woman, Roxanne Hayes, a prostitute, in Tampa, Florida. A trial in Dec 1997 ended in a mistrial and another was set for 1998. He was sentenced to death in 1998, but died of cancer in 2001 in a Florida prison hospital.
Links: USA, California, Murder, Rape

1978 Oct 12

Nancy Spungen (b.1958), girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious, was found dead on the bathroom floor of their NYC hotel room. She had bled to death from a single stab wound to the abdomen.
Links: USA, NYC, Murder, Pop&Rock

1978 Nov 1

In Dallas, Texas, Jonathan Bruce Reed attacked Wanda Jean Wadle and her roommate, Kimberly Pursley. He'd apparently entered their apartment by posing as a maintenance man. In 1979 Reed was convicted and condemned to death for the rape-slaying of Wanda Jean Wadle at her apartment. In 2009 an appeals court ruled that Reed could be freed because prosecutors improperly excluded blacks from his jury in the belief that blacks empathize with defendants.
Links: USA, Murder, Texas, Rape

1978 Nov 18

In Jonestown, Guyana, California Rep. Leo J. Ryan and four other people, investigating the Jim Jones cult, were killed by members of the Peoples Temple. Greg Robinson, a SF Examiner photographer, Don Harris, NBC correspondent, Bob Brown, NBC cameraman, and Patricia Parks, a temple defector, were shot dead. Congressional aide Jackie Speier survived 5 bullets. The killings were followed by a night of mass murder and suicide. 918 people died at Jonestown, including 260 children. In 1982 John Jacobs and Tim Reiterman authored "Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People." In 2010 Laura Johnston Kohl authored “Jonestown Survivor: An Insider’s Look.” In 2011 survivors unveiled a memorial at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, Ca., with the names of all the dead.
Links: USA, California, Suicide, SF, Murder, Guyana, SF Bay Area, Journalism

1978 Nov 26

Albert Miles, governor of the maze prison, was murdered when gunmen forced their way into his home and shot him while restraining his wife. Two men were later convicted of his murder and given life sentences.
Links: Murder, Northern Ireland

San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supv. Harvey Milk, a gay-rights activist, were gunned down inside City Hall by former supervisor Dan White. White used 4 bullets on Moscone and turned himself in at the city’s Northern Police station and made a 24-minute taped confession. Moscone became the 3rd US mayor to die in a political killing. Diane Feinstein automatically became acting mayor of SF. She was then elected by the board members to serve out Moscone’s term.
Links: USA, SF, Murder

1978 Nov 28

Armida Wiltsey (40) of Lafayette, Ca., was found raped and strangled near the Lafayette Reservoir. In 2003 DNA evidence linked Darryl Kemp, a Texas inmate, to the murder. Kemp had been recently paroled from prison, where he served time for killing a nurse in 1957. His death sentence in that case was commuted when the death penalty was declared unconstitutional in 1972. In late 2008 a jury said that Kemp should be executed.
Links: USA, Murder, SF Bay Area

1978 Dec 14

In Northern Ireland John Murdie McTier, Belfast Prison officer, was driving home with two colleagues when a number of shots were fired from a passing car by the IRA. Both his passengers survived the attack but Mr. McTier died three days later from his wounds. He was survived by his wife and three small children.
Links: Murder, Northern Ireland

1978

Amy Sue Seitz (2) was kidnapped, raped, mutilated with pliers and murdered by Theodore Frank in Ventura County, Ca. His diaries noted molestations over 20 years. Frank was sentenced to death twice but died in prison of a heart attack in 2001.
Links: USA, California, Murder, Rape

1978

Hedayat Eslaminia and his family fled Iran. He was a minister of the Shah and reportedly fled with a fortune. In Jul, 1984, he was kidnapped and slain by his son Reza in California.
Links: California, Iran, Murder